Measuring Dust on Mars

Abstract

Mars is a dusty planet. Will dust accumulation on solar arrays be a problem for large solar power systems used on long-duration future missions on Mars? NASA Lewis Research Center's Materials Adherence Experiment (MAE) on the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner rover was designed to find out. It measured the dust deposited on the rover's solar array by measuring the change in transparency of a movable glass cover as dust settled on it. This graph shows the results from the first 2 weeks of operation on Mars.